Here's another new development that seems to point to a surge in real estate investment from China.

Forbes reported today that a mystery, 47-story Chinese tower is going to take shape in Midtown Manhattan, and its developers plan to position the residential project as a venture set on quenching the Chinese appetite for American homes.

The Chinese named, but U.S.-based Kuafu Properties endeavor is the second undertaking by a Chinese developer in the U.S. to be announced within the past couple of weeks, the Forbes report said.

Passers-by use cellphones in front of electronic stock board of a securities firm in East Asia on July 1, 2014. ¬ (AP Photo)

The New York-based company, registering as recently as December 2013, spent $62 million to buy the plots of land for the project that will include some 50 luxury condominiums and a 400-room hotel that will take up 20 floors. Three stories will be made up of the ‚ÄúShanghai Club,‚ÄĚ an exclusive membership club aimed at an international demographic.

Two news ¬ announcements in recent months point to a new wave of real estate buys from Chinese real estate investors from Coast-to-Coast:

No. 1: The National Association of Realtors reported in July that Chinese investment in real estate in the U.S. in 2014 represents nearly 25 percent of the overall market. Dollar-wise, the spend has surged from $12.8 billion in 2013 to $12.8 billion in 2014. Canadian investment fell to second place, with sales estimated to hit $13 billion in 2014.

States at the top of the heap for investment were¬ Florida, California,¬ Arizona, Texas, and New York.

No. 2: The online real estate information service, Zillow.com, in April announced the company and a subsidiary of E-House (China Holdings Limited) plan to build a co-branded website to create a platform to bridge information with home buyers in China.

The E-House¬ subsidiary, Leju Holdings, said it would add a ¬Ä¬úU.S. property search box on the navigation bar of its website in China as part the agreement the online ventures announced on April 2 in Shanghai. Zillow said it will build a platform connecting both sites. Through it, Leju users can be directed to Zillow's home information search platform in the United States.

Geoffrey Yinyu He, CEO of Leju, said at the time that partnership agreement by E-House, a leading real estate services company in China, provides an additional channel for U.S. brokers to tap into a "¬Ä¬úhuge pool"¬Ä¬Ě of Chinese customers.

Frank Paco Licea, a Riverside-based real estate broker, who works with six Chinese investors and has taught a workshop on leveraging global and Chinese real estate sales, in our real estate blog back then, expressed surprise this hadn't happened sooner.

International investment has long been a focal point in Southern California, a gateway for buyers in countries from China and Canada to Mexico and Japan, according Licea and past surveys by NAR and the California Association of Realtors.

The C.A.R. survey, completed in 2013 by 218 Realtors , said 32 percent of the last international transaction that closed in 2013 involved a buyer from China, surpassing Canadian buyers by a margin of 2-to-1.

Licea said the Internet already has an influence on buying in Southern California.

The agreement is important because buyers from China use public domains ¬Ä" to get around government blocks ¬Ä" to do research on the Internet before traveling to the United States to contact a Realtor, look at houses and close escrow on deals. "¬Ä¬úThey aren'¬Ä¬ôt making investments sight unseen,"¬Ä¬Ě Licea said in April.

One key contact of Licea brings over 50 investors every quarter from Shanghai and Beijing. He works through a translator from Hong Kong who is fluent in Mandarin, English and Cantonese to help leverage deals.

"¬Ä¬úIt makes sense that an American-based company would create an easier way for the Chinese who are already buying here to do what we are already doing which is research properties online before they contact a Realtor," ¬ Licea told us at the time.

Real estate has had incredible ups and downs over the last 30 years, which some refer to as bubbles, said Steve Johnson, regional director of MetroStudy Southern California, a Hanley Wood co-owned real estate research firm.

"¬Ä¬úIf you were to say where is the next driver that is really going to be important to real estate, like the change in monetary policy, the fall of the Twin Towers or the Federal Reserve unleashing money in the country, where is the next driver?" Johnson said. "It's obvious. It is immigration, primarily from the Pacific Rim."

Internet platforms that market real estate in the nation to companies off-shore has as much potential to change the fabric of real estate transactions, as did migration patterns over the first 200 years of our nation, he said.

"¬Ä¬úIf you take a drive through the San Gabriel Valley and Irvine, you get a sense of the power that'¬Ä¬ôs about to embrace the western shores of America," Johnson said.

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